Sign Guerin, waive Darche?

Agreed, he is not as bad as some people seem to think and he works hard while never complaining.

He's also a good vet to have around, a guy who already fought for his spot and know that he needs to always work hard.

I don't know if people remember, but he was credited for the resurgence of Lapierre during the playoff. Darche is the one who took him under his wing and convinced him he could save his season. These kinds of guys are invaluable for a team. Halpern is on the same mold - an ex captain, a guy who will have a presence and who won't complain about his icetime. If you need to sign depth vets, I think it's wise to go that route.

He was hurt last year. He looked ok to me with the Flys. Maybe not. I'm a man who is willing to take risks tho...!

No, he didn't. Check the Flyers board topic about Guerin. We're all ecstatic that he didn't make the team.

He couldn't cut it while being attached to Crosby's hip and getting prime PP time with Pittsburgh. Zero team besides Philly have shown interest in him this off-season. He couldn't crack Philly's lineup. He couldn't do better then a bunch of AHLers and crappy prospects in pre-season games.

Guerin is a better top6 forward then Darche but Darche is a better bottom6 forward. Guerin is useless in a 3rd or 4th line and is now one of the slower players in the NHL (which goes entirely agaisnt team philosophy).

We already have Cammy, Pleks, G-Love, Gionta, Kostitsyn, Pouliot, Eller and Boyd that can do a similar or better job than Guerin in a top6 (thats 8 players, so we need 3 injuries in the top6 for Guerin to play)

Meanwhile we have Eller, Boyd, Lapierre, Pyatt, Moen, Halpern and White (if he makes the time) to play in the bottom6. Two of them can sub in for injuries in the top6 and thats 6 (or 7 with White) players so we need only 1 or 2 injuries/scratch in our entire forward lineup for Darche to be useful as a player.

In other words lets say Lapierre misses a game Darche replaces him. Guerin can't. If Gomez misses a game Eller replaces him, Darche moves on the 4th line and Boyd or Lapierre replace Eller on the 3d line. Darche gives us more flexibility with the lineup. I also think speed is important in all of our skaters, this is perhaps one of the main reasons explaining Latendresse's failure under Martin's system.

Personaly it's because I prefer my fourth liners to be grittier. It's not helpful to just be a hard worker in this league anymore.

But it is helpful to score at 5vs5 from the 4th line.

Darche has obvious scorer qualities but will never be a top line threat due to equally obvious faults. That said, against other 4th lines and when he has limited ice time, he gets results. He reminds me a little of a better Jason Ward. I was a fan of Ward as well. Always liked guys like that.

That plus a good attitude, chemistry with Halpern, the fact he'll take any role and is a good vet is what makes him useful.

I hope he keeps playing at the level he was last season. Maybe he'll open a few eyes, but then again probably not.

I like him a lot when he's in that role. It's when Martin starts moving him up the depth chart where my like for him decreases.

When Martin moved him up last year he was productive in short spurts. He was a very productive player last year when you consider his ice time. This year he may not get a sniff at on the top 6 even if injuries hit with 2 of Boyd/Eller/Pouliot potentially being on the 3rd line.

Now that I think of it. Even if we had 2-3 forwards injured they wouldn't sign him. We have white, maxpac, desharnais, engqvist, avtsin, palushaj, etc all ready for a few call ups. Perhaps not all are NHL ready but in a short stint they'd be fine. Guerin isn't needed I guess.

Now that I think of it. Even if we had 2-3 forwards injured they wouldn't sign him. We have white, maxpac, desharnais, engqvist, avtsin, palushaj, etc all ready for a few call ups. Perhaps not all are NHL ready but in a short stint they'd be fine. Guerin isn't needed I guess.

Not in the least. There's no way the habs even are thinking of signing him. He'd be useless here.

There's a reason no one wants him, everyone thinks : if he couldn't look good with Crosby and forced Crosby to shoot more instead of pass, there's no way he looks good with anyone else now that he's a year older.

The only way it would have possibly made sense is if we had not signed Halpern and decided to run 3 scoring lines with the third some mix of Guerin, Eller and Pouliot and found someone to play with Gomez and Gionta. Someone like Pacioretty or Boyd, I dunno.